If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

Dell Dimension 4300 Heatsink

Hi, I have a dell dimension 4300 p4 384 megs of ram made in about 2001 running xp fully patched anyway there is a green box ( heatsink i think?) that covers my processor to "channel" the air from the air over the processor to cool it down. well somehow this green cover has been lost i have tried to call dell but the hold times were killing me so i hung up... but my processor is running pretty hot and im worried about a meltdown is there anything i can do?

I have made several of these devices using old washing-up liquid bottles and vacuum cleaner hose .......................mind you, I did have to take a Dremel to the case!

My advice would be to get an exhaust fan You can probably get one for $5~$10. They mount at the back like a PCI card and evacuate hot air from the box at a rate between 40 & 60 cubic feet/minute (cfm). Please note, these are NOT the normal 80mm case fans...........they align with your PCI/AGP cards.

When you say "pretty hot" how hot is that, and what are you using to measure it? Remember that Dell are "a law unto themselves" and that some third party diagnostics will produce unpredictable results.

Cheers

If you cannot do someone any good: don't do them any harm....
As long as you did this to one of these, the least of my little ones............you did it unto Me.
What profiteth a man if he gains the entire World at the expense of his immortal soul?

I wouldn't go to dell and tell them you lost it because that's telling them you were messing inside the computer and that might void any kind of warranty you might have. Dell doesn't like it when you mess inside their computers... Though you said you got it in 2001 so the warranty might already be void?

Telling us the temp your cpu is at could help... P4's tend to get hotter and can resist heat better then AMD's...

I have no idea the temp that my cpu is running at i just measure it by when i turn off the pc i just feel how hot the cpu is... its not burning hot but pretty hot... i bought a new fan from newegg.com but i didnt know that i was to big and it wont fit in my case i have a p4 1.5 gigahertz processor and since my pc is made in 2001 i dont have a warrenty anymore. i really want a new pc but im to poor to get one right now. all i lost was the thing that "channels" the air over the cpu and i dont want to have to deal with dell unless i have too.

Feel how hot the cpu is with your computer running, just touch the heatsink, if the heatsink to hot to keep your finger on then it's to hot. However if you can keep your finger there then it's fine...

heh, which reminds me of this time in my computer class at school... This kid that I don't get along with overclocked the cpu in the computer I was working on and I guess he tried to frame me or something... Soon enough the room started smelling like ****... Then my computer just turned off... I checked the cpu because that was the first thing that came to mind and I nearly burned my hand off it was so hot! My teacher asked what the hell happened and I was like I don't know I didn't mess with the cpu settings... But then someone confessed, explaining that that kid did it and he got in real trouble for costing the school over 300 bucks in cpu and mobo damages lol...

Dell and all the others take advantage of the naive if you ask me. I heard Dell has great Techsupport, but you pay for that when they originally bilked you. Of course at night I suppose you get the Indian crew support. One thing is for sure, Dell wouldn't add a duct if the chip didn't call for it. I wouldn't stick your hand inside a cluttered Dell case while it's on. If you want to test the CPU temp, hopefully that board has a software readable Winbond chip or some other types of diodes. Use these apps Everest Home to check your sensors --&gt;CPU heat. And CPU-Z to check what the core on that chips is.

Post some screenshots of these and I'll tell you if you're in desperate need of cooling. But I have to know the core etc.. and see the temps.

Intel just came out with their next generation architecture, their new power consumption report on their newest chip will be using less power. They said the Conroe's will offer 5 times the performance per watt, than the older. Which translates into less heat.

Prescottís are power hungry beast.

Ducts are more commonly used to bring in cooler air to breath over your heat sink instead of hot ambient.

Now to silence any potential AMD fan boys over heat specs.

Can you tell me the difference in the cooling with these?

Athlon 64 FX-51

VS.

Intel P4 (C, G)

Or how about this to make it easier?

Intel Celeron Willamette

Intel Celeron P4 Northwood

VS.

AMD XP/MP T-bred "A"

AMD XP/MP Palomino

Groundless chants are great if you don't have any actual information to base your statements on. Point being, the whole "Intel runs hotter than AMD" is really anecdotal, bias, useless, pseudo-knowledge etc...etc.... You'll see a lot of this on the Internet because everyone wants to take the shortcuts to learning. Compare different cores.

That is a first on me...............I always heard it the other way round? AMDs are supposed to be the hot chips AFAIK? As I understood it, the P4, or certainly the later ones will switch themselves off if they get too hot.

I doubt if third party software will work too well with a Dell box, that has always been my experience going up to an Inspiron 8100/1.7Ghz.

I would strongly state that I would NEVER attempt to overclock a shop bought/proprietary machine. They just cut corners on fans, heatsinks, thermal paste and airflow design.

The machine I used to type this I built a while ago when a P4 2.26Mhz was the best you could get. Hey I got it to run at 3.066Mhz stable! and it was only at around 43c .............but with all the wires out of the way, a huge CoolerMaster heat pipe heatsink, silver thermal compound, an exhaust fan etc.....................

My point is, don't rely on the "boxed processor kits" you see. Do your homework, and get an OEM CPU with other stuff selected by yourself.

TEX~ I would say that an exhaust fan will more than compensate for the bit of Dell plastic.......................also:

STOP FONDLING THAT HEATSINK YOUNG MAN!................if you are not properly grounded you may give it a fright..................not to mention get arrested for it

If you cannot do someone any good: don't do them any harm....
As long as you did this to one of these, the least of my little ones............you did it unto Me.
What profiteth a man if he gains the entire World at the expense of his immortal soul?

Everest is way off when reading temps... Everest read a 10 C difference then PC health in the bios... But that's just my experience, I have yet to try cpu-z

I agree with you !mitationRust about Intel vs AMD... Some presscotts have a temp threshold of 70C!! My cpu is never running cooler then 50C and it works just fine. Doom 3, farcry, etc... all run perfectly normal...

You mean Everest was way off for you, compared to your likely off BIOS temps.

I thinks it's time for a signature spiel, don't worry this one wont quite be a COSMOS tirade.

BIOS and App readings from onboard on-die's are notoriously inaccurate, but to how much is debatable from one brand to one board to the next, same make model or not. Hell, some brands purposely underscore reads to make their **** smell better. Take it further; we can get into the metry on this if you want. Onboard BIOS code call signs etc..etc.. processes the raw data found by the thermal sensors in-socket and on-die, this raw data must be programmed to return values that approximate the reads in temperature. Changes in this code may change the temperature reads. All that can be changed with a FLASH or later model. They have no ISO standard for this code or diodes etc..etc... Suffice to say comparing your stuff to his, mine to yours, this app to the next is really anecdotal in terms of accuracy. I have little confidence in these reports from the boards sensors such as silicon dies. The only way to get real-time accurate reads is through external temperature probes like a properly placed CPU thermistor. I seriously doubt he is going to buy one of these, so we have to roll with his sensors. He'd be lucky if DELL gave him a health option in his BIOS or even a blip of a read out after boot.

But you see how fanboys on both sides try to cast such a big net over what runs hotter? The common result by the masses is being sheep. Of course this has to do with AMD's and Intel's PR spin. I could say AMD is hotter than Intel.....well what the hell am I comparing a P-one to a AMDT-bred?

You have to compare the core's to get any kind of sane comparison. Now you could say Prescott's run hotter than any AMD at the moment. But for the ignorant online to make such equivocal statements about both chips I find to be gay. Prescott's are a very interesting from a technical perspective; I personally see them to be a radical move sideways from a normal user's standpoint. You pay as you move laterally as well, that's a step I won't be taking again. Too bad a lot of the Northy's left the market.

As for overclocking these "Dellís" etc.... If they let you at all, one can slowly increase the FSB until it's not stable anymore. Then back it down to where it's stable. 95%+ of the time you're not going to see any change in temperature. To counter that instability you would up your voltage. Now when you touch you V-core that's when ones heat starts to rise.

nihil,

If you thought that statment deserved a WOW!

How about this one? I believe (SNDS) "Sudden Northwood Death Syndrome" to be a fabricated fallacy. If my clock can't make the run I want it to, I need another CPU anyway.